April 2017 - Vol. 60 No. 4

Features

Opinion Departments Apr 1 2017

Gender Diversity in Computing: Are We Making Any Progress?

Recently I came across notes for a talk I gave in 1991 about women and computer science. It was depressing to read through it. Change the date and I could give the same talk today. How can that be?

Valerie Barr

Computing Profession

Opinion Departments Apr 1 2017

A Genetic Theory of the Silicon Valley Phenomenon

What is it about the residents of Silicon Valley that encourages risk taking? I have often wondered about that and have reached an interesting, if possibly controversial conclusion.

Vinton G. Cerf

Computing Profession

Opinion Letters to the editor Apr 1 2017

Consider Indirect Threats of AI, Too

Alan Bundy's Viewpoint "Smart Machines Are Not a Threat to Humanity" (Feb. 2017) was too limited in light of the recent accomplishments of artificial intelligence. Reducing the entire field to four "successful AI systems" does not give the full picture of the impact of AI on humanity.

CACM Staff

BLOG@CACM Apr 1 2017

Crafting a National Cyberdefense, and Preparing to Support Computational Literacy

John Arquilla considers how we should interpret the alleged Russian cyberattack on the U.S. Presidential election; Mark Guzdial describes the potential benefits of a 'computing lab.'

John Arquilla and Mark Guzdial

Computing Applications

News Apr 1 2017

Sensors on the Brain

Implantable wireless monitors give researchers a new look inside the human body.

Gregory Mone

Computing Applications

News Apr 1 2017

Digitizing the World

Digital maps trawl for real-time updates.

Chris Edwards

Computing Applications

News Apr 1 2017

Computing the Arts

Artists can use software to create art, and some software creates art all on its own.

Esther Shein

Computing Applications

displayed images produced with innovation engines

News Apr 1 2017

Cybersecurity

2002 ACM Turing laureate Len Adleman, 2014 ACM Prize in Computing recipient Dan Boneh, 2015 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award recipient Brent Waters, and ACM Fellows Patrick McDaniel and Paul Van Oorschot discuss current issues in cybersecurity.

CACM Staff

Security and Privacy

Brent Waters, Dan Boneh, Len Aldeman, and Patrick McDaniel.

Opinion Global computing Apr 1 2017

Online Social Networks and Global Women’s Empowerment

Mediating social change or reinforcing male hegemony?

Ineke Buskens

Computing Applications

Online Social Networks and Global Women's Empowerment, illustration

Opinion Kode vicious Apr 1 2017

The Chess Player Who Couldn’t Pass the Salt

AI: Soft and hard, weak and strong, narrow and general. Dear KV,

George V. Neville-Neil

Computing Applications

The Chess Player Who Couldn't Pass the Salt, illustration

Opinion Viewpoint Apr 1 2017

Wanted: Toolsmiths

Seeking to use software, hardware, and algorithmic ingenuity to create unique domain-independent instruments.

William Regli

Computing Profession

Opinion Viewpoint Apr 1 2017

What It Means to Be an Entrepreneur Today

In his keynote address before the fifth edition of the Tech Open Air conference in Berlin in 2016, Kickstarter's cofounder and CEO Yancey Strickler suggests the city's tech community faces "a very rare opportunity."

Yancey Strickler

Computing Profession

What It Means to Be an Entrepreneur Today, illustration

Practice Apr 1 2017

Pervasive, Dynamic Authentication of Physical Items

The use of silicon PUF circuits.

Meng-Day (Mandel) Yu and Srinivas Devadas

Architecture and Hardware

Pervasive, Dynamic Authentication of Physical Items, illustration

Practice Apr 1 2017

Uninitialized Reads

Understanding the proposed revisions to the C language.

Robert C. Seacord

Security and Privacy

Practice Apr 1 2017

Does Anybody Listen to You?

How do you step up from mere contributor to real change-maker?

Kate Matsudaira

Computing Profession

Does Anybody Listen to You?, illustrative photo

Research and Advances Contributed articles Apr 1 2017

Attack of the Killer Microseconds

Microsecond-scale I/O means tension between performance and productivity that will need new latency-mitigating ideas, including in hardware.

Luiz Barroso, Mike Marty, David Patterson, and Parthasarathy Ranganathan

Computing Applications

Attack of the Killer Microseconds, illustration

Research and Advances Contributed articles Apr 1 2017

Computational Thinking For Teacher Education

This framework for developing pre-service teachers' knowledge does not necessarily depend on computers or other educational technology.

Aman Yadav, Chris Stephenson, and Hai Hong

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Review articles Apr 1 2017

A Service Computing Manifesto: The Next 10 Years

Mapping out the challenges and strategies for the widespread adoption of service computing.

Computing Applications

A Service Computing Manifesto, illustration

Research and Advances Research highlights Apr 1 2017

Technical Perspective: Proving File Systems Meet Expectations

"Certifying a File System Using Crash Hoare Logic: Correctness in the Presence of Crashes" presents a big step toward real-world file systems that are crash-safe in a strict sense.

Gernot Heiser

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Research highlights Apr 1 2017

Certifying a File System Using Crash Hoare Logic: Correctness in the Presence of Crashes

This paper introduces Crash Hoare logic, which extends traditional Hoare logic with a crash condition, a recovery procedure, and logical address spaces for specifying disk states at different abstraction levels.

Computing Applications

Certifying a File System Using Crash Hoare Logic, illustration

Research and Advances Research highlights Apr 1 2017

Technical Perspective: Building a Safety Net For Data Reuse

The authors of "Guilt-Free Data Reuse" show there is a way to construct a safety net that goes around a fixed dataset so that it may be analyzed interactively without compromising statistical validity even when the dataset is analyzed in an interactive manner.

Jonathan Ullman

Systems and Networking

Research and Advances Research highlights Apr 1 2017

Guilt-Free Data Reuse

In this work, we initiate a principled study of how to guarantee the validity of statistical inference in adaptive data analysis.

Systems and Networking

Opinion Last byte Apr 1 2017

Stacking the Deck

Consider 16 cards consisting of the ace through 8 of hearts and the ace through 8 of spades. You are allowed to arrange the cards as you wish. Your opponent chooses a number between 1 and 8.

Dennis Shasha

Systems and Networking

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